


Fates Unwanted

by BlackMajjicDuchess



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Courage, Danger, Despair, Developing Relationship, Disfigurement, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hope, Implied/Referenced Torture, Innocence, Lions, Nihilism, Politics, Protectiveness, Psychosis, Swearing, Violence, Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:13:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackMajjicDuchess/pseuds/BlackMajjicDuchess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wraps himself in violence, embracing his own darkness and delighting in the killing. The world--and all of its gutless, guileless, worthless inhabitants, too--could burn, for all he cared.</p><p>Into the den of lions she walks, trembling and wholly unprepared, and he wants to let her. One more stupid girl in the jaws of a beast. Another day, the same death toll, not worth commenting upon. Sandor Clegane has seen a hundred like her die the same way. Why should she be any different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fates Unwanted

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ASOIAF fic. I've been incredibly apprehensive about writing for the fandom. George RR Martin is ridiculously talented, and I'm always afraid my work won't measure up.
> 
> But... I love the Hound. And I needed to write this. For me. 
> 
> I hope you like it too. :)

Sandor Clegane was fucking scary.

That was what everyone believed. That was what he wanted them to believe. It suited him just fine. It suited him bloody fucking perfect, in fact. Men who wanted to fight him gave him the hairy eyeball and a once-over and thought fucking better of that. So instead, they’d spit, and they’d glare, and they’d try to convey the fact that they would have fucking tried if they’d have had the balls to take one more step closer.

They didn’t have the balls. And if they did, they wouldn’t have ‘em for much longer.

Women thinking he was frightening was a blessing. Their reactions had a broader range, too, from shuddering, sickening revulsion all the way to the panting heat that they seemed to get around a man who could crush their frail throats with one gauntleted glove, an attraction to violence. A suicidal, irrational death wish that made their cunts wet. _Madness_ , he thought, shaking his head. For the first, he stared them down. _Look at me, wench. Look into the truth about men._ It would have been hilarious, that all women wanted to believe the best of a man, right up until the moment he raped or killed her, or someone else who didn’t fucking matter, breaking the little spell. Why were they all so bloody fucking stupid? As for the second…

Well, a man had needs.

He hated all the bloody buggers of King’s Landing. He hated everyone at Winterfell, too. And you know what? Fuck it. _I hate everyone,_ he thought, fixing a flesh-melted stare on the boy who would be his king someday, wishing he could just snap the fragile neck of the bastard and be done with it. _Someday, you little cock, I will wear your blood and be handsome in it._ He grinned inwardly at that. The thought of someday being aesthetically pleasing was grimly amusing. Idly, he fingered the bone that was visible in the skeletal dip of his cheeks.

That was when he saw her: Ned Stark’s oldest daughter. The pretty one. _That poor bitch_ , he thought. Someday she was doomed to marry Joffrey, the child tyrant. It was the first time he could recall feeling real pity for anything. No one knew the brat better than the Hound, the vicious cunt’s faithful dog. Clegane had watched the prince cut each of the toes from the paws of a newly weaned hound’s get, a pup from Robert’s kennels. Joffrey laughed gleefully throughout, gave the bloody creature as a gift to a homeless orphan on the street, and then drove a spike through its bloody head. The Hound knew this because he had been the one to hold the poor beast still as its toes became fewer, and because he’d been the one to hit the street rat to knock him out and save him the grief.

The world was a horrid place. Why anyone chose to breed more worthless, mewling, treacherous men into it would forever elude him. It’d have been better if he hadn’t been born at all.

The Stark girl—Sansa, he reminded himself—was walking her wolf bitch on a strap of leather. The dire wolf seemed to be tugging her along. His mouth twisted with distaste; wolves were wild creatures—something he could relate to—and none more wild than the dire wolf. Putting one on a lead was the same as killing it. Why was it that no one understood how to treat a killer?

There was a soft gasp as Sansa nearly ran headlong into Payne, the royal executioner. “Pardon me, ser,” she breathed on a shudder. Clegane could practically feel the fearful butterfly pulse from where he stood nearby. Fear as thick as hers was almost tangible, the arteries of the neck beating out the rhythms of battle. Usually, the taste and tremor of fright thrilled him. It was the music of sweet victory, painted red, when he could feel the life’s blood spurt through his fingers.

A queer shift occurred in the Hound as he watched Sansa Stark struggle to be polite to the dour, staring face of Ser Ilyn Payne. A fool could see that she was terrified and reviled all in one go. He wasn’t sure what made him reach out to her, only that he felt the need to ease her fears, or at least to tell her the truth about men and danger and to stay far away from them. Why did he care? But before he had a chance to question it, his heavy hand fell upon her shoulder, and she rounded on him with the same brand of fear.

“Do I frighten you so much, girl?” he blurted from surprise at the wide-eyed look on her face. He had never possessed much of a social filter. He only said the first thing that came to his mind. He could see that it was the wrong thing to say, though. His face, long worn upon his countenance and by now long forgotten, at least to him, always caused fear, especially to young women. He quickly turned the attention away from his scars the only way he could think how. “Or is it him there making you shake?” Payne turned his frigid glare upon the Hound, and Clegane found himself smugly satisfied that the knight could not speak to defend himself. “He frightens me too. Look at that _face_.” He kept his own face carefully neutral, trying for the first time to look _less_ frightening instead of _more_.

To his surprise, the girl recovered quickly and adopted him as an impromptu ally, turning her back to him to apologize to the executioner. How odd. “I’m sorry if I offended you ser,” she said to the other man, her tremulous voice calmer for the support. Payne’s lips twisted with rage; for her, for the Hound, for who-the-fuck-knows. He stalked away without a word. Obviously. “Why won’t he speak to me?” Sansa asked him. The Hound’s curiosity piqued that she’d ask him such a question. Why, for whatever reason, had she so quickly treated him as a friend instead of a butcher with a ruined face?

Sansa Stark was intriguing for all the wrong reasons, he mused. She was far too sweet, too pretty, and too innocent to be on her way to King’s landing. Not like that wild snot of a sister that she had. And never mind the brothers; all men grew up to be killers, or dreamed of growing up to be killers and simply failed to be good at it. Her brothers would either become killers themselves or die. It was the reality of the world, and Sansa would find out sooner or later. He spotted the little shit prince stalking toward them with a purposeful swagger and accepted that she would find out sooner rather than later, and find out the hard way. The thought of Joffrey abusing the trembling creature that now leaned toward him subconsciously as if seeking his guard made him feel strangely protective, though. It would do her good, he decided, if she did not go in blind. He hated the thought of having to hold her down while Joffrey sliced off all of _her_ toes.

“He hasn’t been very talkative these last twenty years,” he told her gently, “since the mad king had his tongue ripped out with pincers.” He wanted to say more, willed her to grasp the cruel truth about the Seven Kingdoms, and males, and all things dark and unfair. There simply wasn’t enough time to warn her properly, though. Her betrothed arrived, smiling and pretty and shiny as the coins for which his family was known.

It never ceased to amaze him how simply making a killer prettier, dressing him up in fine silks and polishing his buttons, duped the weaker sex. Was that really all it took?

“Speaks stern well with his sword, though,” Joffrey announced with much pomp. “Ser Ilyn Payne, the kings justice. The Royal executioner.” His deceptively soft, plump little hand reached for her face, as if to comfort her. Sandor knew very well that Joffrey would rather curl his fingers in her auburn hair and yank handfuls of it from her bloody scalp. If she screamed, Joffrey would laugh. He adopted a fraudulent expression of concern and asked, “What is it sweet lady? Does the hound frighten you? Go away with you dog,” he commanded imperiously, wrinkling his nose with disgust and playing the hero. “You’re scaring my lady.” He glared down his nose up at the Hound, expecting compliance.

He felt his lip curl in displeasure at the rough dismissal, turned without a word. It rankled, as it always did, when the little cunt spoke to him that way. Perhaps Sansa Stark was not as afraid of him as Joffrey thought; although, now that Joffrey was present, she seemed to have changed her tune in a right hurry. Inwardly seething, he turned to walk away. Behind him, the prince was wooing the stupid girl with more fancy talk. “I don’t like to see you upset. Sun’s finally shining. Come walk with me.” _Fucking liar,_ he opined privately

If the little bitch only knew. Joffrey would flay her and make gloves of her pretty white hide if he could, and caress the cheeks of other women who were none the wiser.

He shook himself angrily. Again, why should he care? Women like her were fucked and beaten and ripped apart by men of his ilk every day. Why on earth would this woman and this man be any different? Why _should_ they be?

The thoughts troubled him in a way of which he was unfamiliar. Perhaps it was because Sansa Stark would never have had to endure such brutality if she had not been unlucky enough to be Ned Stark’s eldest daughter. ‘Twould be better if her younger sister had been chosen instead. That one, he considered with a sneer, might be just wild enough to gut the prince once they were married. Oh, wouldn’t that be a sweet, sweet sight!

He fiddled with the straps of his saddle, obsessing over Stranger’s tack while he spent far too many thoughts on the Stark girl. There was something about her, about her situation, that just didn’t sit right with him. It was definitely out of character for Sandor Clegane to be suffering from a moral dilemma, but there the fuck it was. Sansa Stark was too young, too naïve, too pretty, and too weak to be the plaything of Joffrey Baratheon. He shook his head, muttering to himself about noble ladies’ daughters and idiocy and men that should be killed.

Sansa Stark wouldn’t last a month in King’s Landing. She’d be beaten, probably raped, destroyed from the inside out in one way or another. He should forget about her, leave her to her fate, like he had with so many other innocent little girls in the clutches of the wrong man. Sansa Stark was no different.

He paused in his workings, frozen by a momentary memory. Sansa Stark, leaning back toward the Hound to glean just a smidgen of support, gathering her wits and her courage to face down Ser Ilyn Payne. Her back was straight, her voice clear and apologetic. Barely a child, and already mastering the regal bearing of a monarch, valor born from nowhere. It was too bad, really, that she’d never survive to womanhood. He’d be interested to see that.

He chomped down on his lip, hard, when he realized he was threatening a smile. The wolf girl would be dead within a month. Not worth a second thought.

And yet, he found himself thinking up ways to seem less fucking scary, for the first time in his life. She was probably going to die. He accepted that. But there was a chance—the barest, thinnest, most fragile of chances, but a chance—that she might somehow survive Joffrey and the Lannisters. Alone, she was doomed.

But maybe she didn’t have to be.


End file.
